David Matthews’s A Vision of the Sea, receiving its world premiere last night, is a substantial and attractive work inspired by the sights and sounds of the sea off the coast of Kent where the composer writes much of his music.

As a younger man, Matthews was close to Benjamin Britten and he makes no secret of his enthusiasm for Debussy. Both these influences are palpable in the new work, though it is characteristic of Matthews’ style in its warm lyricism and sensuousness shot through with poignant rather than abrasive dissonance.

Matthews is also a keen ornithologist, which gives the herring gull calls at the start of his piece a greater authenticity than those of Britten in the Dawn interlude of Peter Grimes. Thereafter there’s powerfully evocative sea music that references Debussy to fine effect with colourful scoring, including bass clarinet and contrabassoon, not to mention the rainsticks suggesting the tug of the tide over shingle.

If the concluding climactic sunrise is unexpected, it’s also something of an aural coup, featuring as it does “the sound of the sun”: scientifically recorded vibrations depicted in sustained string harmonics.

Further surprises were in store when the BBC Philharmonic’s conductor, Juanjo Mena, led a diminutive young man on his arm to the platform for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. The Japanese Nobuyuki Tsujii, blind from birth, is already the winner of prestigious awards but I cannot have been alone in wondering how he learnt the music or how impeccable ensemble was achieved with Mena, whose back was turned to the keyboard throughout.

More than that, Tsujii brought a singing tone and eloquent phrasing to the solo part. It was profoundly moving that the only person who could not witness his deserved standing ovation was Tsujii himself.

Stirring too was Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony, “The Inextinguishable”, whose celebration of the life force in full-throated brass-intoned melodies and bounding rhythms was exhilaratingly projected by Mena and an impressive BBC Philharmonic.

Available on BBC iPlayer; the Proms run until September 7 (0845 401 5040, bbc.co.uk/proms)